Tourist Attraction in Capri:Grotta Azzurra

The Blue Grotto is a karstic cavity that opens on the north-western side of the island of Capri. The Blue Grotto has an opening partially submerged by the sea, from which filters the external light that in this way creates an intense blue hue of color, which represents the peculiar characteristic of the cave. The cave, in fact, was a real underwater appendix to an Augustan Tiberian villa called Gradola, now reduced to a few ruins. Witnesses of this use are the numerous Roman statues, representing Poseidon, a newt and other marine creatures that originally had to be placed along the walls of the cave. The statues, found in 1963 after some archaeological investigations, are now kept in the Museo della Casa Rossa. It was the archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri, involved in several archaeological investigations in Capri in the twentieth century, to perceive the nymphaeum character of the Blue Grotto: «Penetrandovi in ​​the Blue Grotto with difficulty with a cymba piscatory, and amazed by the blue light" of that cave I seem to have entered the house of Glaucus and his cerulean procession of Nereids, and that no artificial Maritime Nymphaeus covered with marble and mosaic work could equal him in beauty. "After the sunset of the Roman Empire, the Grotto was condemned. to a long and inexorable decline.It was not completely forgotten, so much so that the name of "Gradola", for example, already figured in 1696 in a map of the Isolario di Vincenzo Coronelli, in spite of this, no one dared to venture inside, since some ancient Capri legends wanted the cave inhabited by spirits and devils, who had visited the "cursed cave", like the two priests of the story that follows, would have lost his mind. "I am about thirty years old from a very old fisherman who two hundred years before two priests wanted to face the spirits. They also swam for a while in the cave, but immediately they came back, assailed by terrible fear. »Giuseppe Pagano in Kopisch. In 1826 the Prussian poet August Kopisch, the painter Ernesto Fries, the sailor caprese Angelo Ferraro, the innkeeper Pagano (who solicited them in the enterprise) and the donkey Michele Federico decided to explore a cave located on the north-western side of the island , keeping faith to ancient legends that wanted the cave infested by evil spirits and demons. Returning from the adventure, Kopisch also assigned a precise toponymic identity to the cave, calling it "Azzurra": neither "Pagano cave" nor "Glauca cave" (toponym proposed by the Russian exile Apostol Mouravieff since «Glaucus» was synonymous with « blue »is a marine deity of Greek mythology), as names, they had the same success. The chronicle of the day was reported by Kopisch in 1838 in the "Italy" yearbook, under the title The discovery of the Blue Grotto. Naturally Kopisch contributed to extend the fame of the cavity universally, being even cited as the "discoverer" of the Grotto; nevertheless, the Blue Grotto was already known before the writing of the story, thanks to the fiery descriptions of many romantic writers. These include Wilhelm Waiblinger with his Legend in the Blue Grotto (1828) and Hans Christian Andersen, with L'improvvisatore (1835). The rediscovery of the Blue Grotto, in short, defined new coordinates in the Italian Grand Tour itineraries, persuading the rich European travelers to venture on that island that until then, to use the fearsome words of his father Daniello Bartoli, was considered a "Rupe de 'Desperate'. "Near the surface of the water, not far from me, I saw a blue star, which projected a long ray of light, as pure as the ether, on the water's surface "(Hans Christian Andersen)